Apathy or Optimism?

It seems there's a lot of crap being sold. There's a lot of mindless drivel on TV, I haven't seen a lot of quality movie previews lately, and don't even get me started on the sad state of radio music. It seems to me that this proliferation of commercial crap is a direct result of marketing practices. There's too many people for a network, an advertiser, a record label, a production house, to really "know" its customer base. Sure it can real off an endless stream of Arbitron statistics (by the way I'm convinced Arbitron is a play on the word Arbitrary)that say the average customer is a middle aged Caucasian male with high school diploma and 2.6 children. (That's two children plus one benign tumor.) But do they really "know" you? I for one am legitimately excited about the possibility of individual based marketing. If I'm willing to pay a certain price for a certain good than that's what I'm willing to pay. It seems people are forgetting the meaning of the word willing. Sure it may seem fair....but when was anything ever fair?